Monkey Madness

The Man works in the construction field, started at the bottom and worked his way to the upper middle (hey we're still youngin's) He and his Big Brother, Crispy are "erection specialists" (that's no joke it was printed on their t-shirts) that's code for guys who build scaffolding. It's hard labor, and often way closer to the sky than it is to the ground. There's pressure to perform, competition, grunting and man talk but above and through it all, there's pranking. Male bonding at it's finest  gleams like monkey madness.

Back when they were still foremen running crews sweaty the practical jokes ranged from nailing people's tools to the bed of the truck, spray painting their shit hot pink, nailing the tail end of a roll of caution tape to the rear of a driver's truck so that it trails behind them three hundred feet, all the way to removing the tires from some poor fucks car. One idiot apparently revealed his morbid fear of rodents to them, serious stupidity on his part.  A week or more later they gave him a call ten minutes after he left the shop to let him know they'd released mice in his vehicle and he promptly pulled over, leaping from the interior hissing and screaming like a little girl. Another time they sent a young apprentice into a male bath house to demand payment for erecting scaffolding and told him "don't take no for an answer". Of course, now that they work out of the office and the stress level has increased it's only become worse.

There was a guy The Man calls Festerdonkey, a real idiot who made The Man miserable around the office in more ways then you're interesting in hearing here. I know I was tired as hell of hearing about it at home. For him, The Man even purchased supplies and constructed an elaborate trigger invention in order to prank him. There were drawings! And all so he could attach an air horn to this assholes chair rigging it to blast him as soon as he sat down. The entire office laughed their asses off at that one. Don't worry, Festerdonkey couldn't hear anything for a few days let alone worry about the secretaries twittering about his "I just shit my pants" face.

Another guy who hasn't earned a nickname yet takes a bunch of small shit from The Man. Like say The Man's printer runs out of ink. Instead of going all the way down to the supply closet he just exchanges his cartridges with this dude and snickers when the guy complains "son of a bitch this printer runs out of ink like there's no tomorrow!" Other times he hacks in and re-directs where the guys stuff will print out and barely contains himself as the guy clicks and clicks wondering why the printer isn't working. Or if he's really needing entertainment he puts tape over the mouth part of the guys phone. When he gets a call he can hear them but they can't hear him…. They eventually hang up and call the main line again, complaining to the secretary who keeps trying to put them through until she finally marches upstairs to chew the guy a new asshole and discovers what the problem is for him.

I suppose it's obvious you're best to stay on The Mans good side as he tends to funnel his antics toward people he dislikes but that's not always a safe guard. He used to prank our friends the Pringles too. Like phone books; we have no use for them and they didn't used to take them in our recycle bins so he would put them on their porch…. It was a LONG time before they knew it was us. Actually just today I was saying we should mail them some kind of care package and The Man got all excited about mailing them the next phone books the telephone company leaves on our doorstep. Alright, so I'm excited too. That's the kind of practical joke I can get behind, senseless as well as harmless.

When Crispy pranks it appears to mostly be random and all-sweeping. There's isn't necessarily a particular target. For example, a few weeks ago he purchased a bunch of sponges and chocolate and used a paint brush to construct Brownies to bring into the office. He told The Man he took supreme pleasure every moment of making them, imagining the reactions of everyone as they gratefully chose the best of the bunch brownie and brought it up to their drooling mouths only to sink their teeth into bitter sponge. On the other hand, no one is safe. Crispy even pranks his own son, one Friday night he sowed his pant legs shut half-way down and then woke the poor kid early on a Saturday to get ready for school, even shouting "hurry up, we're going to be late, get your pants on!"

The first time The Man and I were going to be hanging out with Chicken and Crispy he had a special warning for us. "Hey, ummm Chicken thinks I can tap dance. I mean really really tap dance like I could have gone pro or something. So ummm if that comes up just go along with it 'cause I'm not ready to tell her I'm not yet."

"Why would she think you tap dance?" we snorted.

"I don't know it was just something to say, I pretended I was all shy about it but then she believed me and it was too funny to stop and now I found out she told her whole family."

"ahahahahaah! They're going to ask you to perform, you know!" I pointed out between chokes and gasps. The thought of her family trying to be open minded and accepting of this new boyfriend who used to be a pro-tap dancer yet looks NOTHING like you would think of that… ahh man it STILL cracks me up. That Chicken put up with a lot, now that I'm writing it all down. Ahem.

The Man's favorite prank story of all time is one that pre-dates me so we'll see if I've got this right. Apparently they started to have it in for these kids that were playing basketball in a school. They would run over and pound on the double doors that led to the gym only to run away leaving the kids inside to stand there panting and swearing and looking for them. Finally they found a dead possum body and attached a sting to it so that when they next pounded on the door, and the kid inside ran to shove the doors wide open the string was pulled making the dead rodent jump up and swing at them. Horrifying for sure.

The kind of prank I hate the most is The Man's favorite; scaring people. When we lived across the street we had one of those mail slots from back when Mail carriers got out of their trucks and he loved waiting for people to come to the door so he could thrust his hands out through the metal flaps and scare the bajeezus out of them. As you read in the last blog, I do not approve of these shenanigans, most especially if they're toward me. That's why, one night long ago when we were watching The Ring with Crispy and Chicken he tried to warn me of what he was about to do, but I couldn't hear him because I was too wrapped up in the scary as hell film AND because I detest movie talkers (when it's a movie I'm actually trying to watch) so I shushed his hot breath out of my ear. The three of us didn't notice he got up and wandered off at all. I was left on the long couch and Crispy had Chicken on his lap in the over-size matching chair. Soon enough The Man had sneaked out the back door, circled all the way around the house and was banging on the window behind their chair. Crispy threw Chicken off his lap, ran out the front door barefoot and leapt over the railing around his front porch on top of The Man. There was a brief scuffle until Crispy realized the hysterical laughing man under him was The Man and then we were all laughing at ourselves and our reactions. I have to say, it's nice to know they're crazy as all fuck. You know, just in case someday the madman pounding on the window outside ISN'T The Man.